WORKSHOPS
UPCOMING WORKSHOPS
Webinar - Design That Works
Thursday, June 25
1 p.m. - 2 p.m.
Speaker:
Jenna Walker
Designer | Architectural Historian
Reed Walker Design Collective
Jenna Reed Walker is an NCIDQ certified interior designer, 36 CFR Part 61 qualified architectural historian, and design strategist with over two decades of practice across Michigan and the United States. She is the founder of Reed Walker Design Collective, a firm working at the intersection of interior design, historic preservation, and design strategy for commercial, hospitality, community, and residential clients.
Her work is grounded in a belief that every space holds a story worth telling. She brings that conviction to adaptive reuse projects, historic rehabilitation, and community-centered design engagements where the stakes are high and the history runs deep.
Beyond her studio practice, Jenna has served as director of the Interior Architecture and Design program at Lawrence Technological University and as a frequent lecturer and design critic. She speaks and writes about the energy of place, the weight of memory, and the people whose lives unfold inside the spaces we design.
Historic downtowns are among our most valuable and underutilized economic assets. They carry embedded narrative, authentic materials, and spatial qualities that no new development can replicate. But buildings alone do not drive revitalization. Intentional design strategy does.
This session makes the case that design and preservation are not separate tracks. When integrated from the earliest stages of a project, they reinforce each other, clarifying feasibility, unlocking incentives, and producing spaces that people want to return to. Drawing on environmental psychology, the experience economy, and real project examples from Michigan communities, this presentation demonstrates how thoughtful design shapes human behavior, increases dwell time, and generates measurable economic impact in historic commercial districts.
Participants will explore how the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards function as a framework for quality rather than a barrier to progress, how early preservation alignment protects access to federal and state historic tax credits, and how even modest design interventions can change the trajectory of a building and a block. The session introduces a practical field assessment tool, the Downtown Assessment Guide, designed to help preservation and downtown professionals conduct more structured building observations before scope or investment decisions are made.
Whether you work at the community, organizational, or project level, this session offers a strategic framework for treating design as infrastructure, connecting the story of a place to the economic conditions that allow it to thrive.
After attending this session, participants will be able to…
1) Explain how early integration of design strategy and preservation compliance strengthens project feasibility, expands access to historic tax credit incentives, and reduces the risk of costly late-stage corrections.
2) Identify the key zones of building assessment during a preliminary walkthrough, including exterior integrity, ground floor and upper floor conditions, historic character, and funding readiness, using a structured field observation framework.
3) Describe how the physical environment influences human behavior, including dwell time, social interaction, spending patterns, and repeat visitation, and apply those principles to the evaluation of historic commercial spaces.
4) Discuss the relationship between authenticity, community identity, and economic competitiveness in historic downtown contexts, and articulate why preservation-rooted design offers a distinct advantage in an experience-driven marketplace.
5) Compare the roles of qualified preservation professionals, interior designers, and design strategists in a rehabilitation project team, and explain how each contributes to compliance outcomes, incentive alignment, and experiential design quality.
Webinar - Epic Stained Glass of Metropolitan Detroit
Thursday, July 30
1 p.m. - 2 p.m.
AICP: CM 1 #9329793
Speaker:
Dale A. Carlson
Archivist, Historian, Photographer
Michigan Stained Glass Census
Dale A. Carlson was born and raised along the northeastern shores of Lake Michigan and has called metropolitan Detroit home since 2004. He holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from Wayne State University and is the author of Corrado Parducci: A Field Guide to Detroit’s Architectural Sculptor, Kahn’s Detroit: A Field Guide to Albert Kahn Designs of the Metro Area and Stained Glass New Orleans: A Field Guide. He lectures regularly on the history of Detroit and Michigan and works as an archivist and photographer for the Michigan Stained Glass Census. He credits his late wife, Carolin Venegas Jones, for inspiring his ventures into publishing and photography.
Join author, photographer and architectural historian Dale A. Carlson at 1:00 pm on the afternoon of Thursday, July 30th, as he discusses the enviable stained glass legacy of metropolitan Detroit, Michigan. Learn about the architects and early histories of numerous significant installations sites in both the city and the suburbs, many over a century old. Important makers covered in this presentation include Willet Studios of Philadelphia, Franz Mayer & Co. of Munich, Ateliers Loire of Chartres, France and, of course, Tiffany Studios of New York City. Carlson’s presentation will be augmented by numerous optimized newspaper and journal clippings and professional photographs that more fully elucidate the histories discussed. It will run approximately 45 minutes and be followed by a short Q&A.
After attending this session, participants will be able to…
1) Identify a handful of metro Detroit structures that house significant stained glass installations; mostly churches.
2) Identify a handful of historically significant stained glass makers represented in the Detroit metro area.
3) Understand and identify by sight the difference between the two most common forms of stained glass window fabrication: traditional lead-lined and dalle de verre aka “faceted”.
4) Explain that secular stained glass windows are significantly more rare than religious, and therefore generally of greater interest to art historians.
5) Explain that Louis Comfort Tiffany’s stained glass making legacy is so highly regarded by history and the public that it has relegated many of his contemporaries to relative obscurity, however unfairly.
6) Locate the website for the Michigan Stained Glass Census and explain that the public can contribute to the Michigan Stained Glass Census archive.
Webinar - Remixing the City: Historic Preservation, Inclusive Design, and the Practice of Community Repair
Thursday, November 19, 2026
1 p.m. - 2 p.m.
Speaker:
Kiana Wenzell
Co-Executive Director, Design Core Detroit
Co-Director, Detroit Month of Design
Kiana Wenzell is an interior designer and creative director with over 17 years’ experience researching, planning, and executing design projects in metropolitan Detroit. She executes large- and small-scale projects at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) and managed local activations in partnership with local and national brands including Gucci, Foot Locker, Kickstarter and Ford Motor Co. Kiana also leads the programing for the Detroit Month of Design, an annual multidisciplinary design festival, that attracted over 50,000 attendees in 2020. Though her work with the festival, she collaborates with designers and partner organizations to create dynamic place-based events that bring cultural experiences to Detroit for Lear Corporation, Rocket Companies, Kickstarter, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Herman Miller, and others. Kiana has a 2004 BS in Interior Design from EMU, and a 2015 MS in Technical and Professional Communications from Lawrence Technological University.
This webinar is a reprise of the keynote address presented at the 2026 MHPN Conference in May, offering attendees another opportunity to experience this timely and impactful presentation.
Kiana Wenzell, Co-Executive Director of Design Core Detroit, explores historic preservation as an undeniably powerful strategy for community repair, recovery, and resilience. She contends that true resilience is more than simply “bouncing back”—it is the capacity of communities to use historic preservation to bend without breaking, to adapt and repair with creativity, grace, and endurance. Through the lens of inclusive design, Wenzell explores how preservation can advance three core dimensions of resilience—social, economic, and environmental. She highlights how Detroit serves as a “Living Laboratory” for these ideas, demonstrating how design and preservation intersect to drive community-led transformation. The lecture will include examples of architectural adaptation and public space renewal, such as the revival of Michigan Central Station into an innovation campus, the transformation of The Congregation church into a thriving neighborhood hub, and projects like the Detroit Riverwalk, Dequindre Cut, and Dreamtroit, which foster accessibility and connection. Wenzell will also discuss environmental stewardship, showcasing how Detroit organizations are upcycling waste into new materials and reimagining vacant land as spaces for cultural and environmental art. The presentation will highlight community-led design, including how residents have reclaimed the front porch as a platform for storytelling, neighborhood memory, and resistance. Ultimately, Wenzell celebrates preservation’s primacy to Resilience by Design—a philosophy of designing for continuity—where cities thrive by being continually remixed, inclusive, and future-ready. This topic is especially relevant as preservationists and urban practitioners face growing challenges: declining civic engagement, economic disinvestment, social fragmentation, and environmental vulnerability. Wenzell’s keynote proposes an integrated framework that centers repair, recovery, and adaptation as essential preservation strategies. Using Detroit as a model, she illustrates how inclusive design can address these challenges through social, economic, and environmental resilience.
After attending this session, participants will be able to…
1) Demonstrate that historic preservation is a powerful planning strategy for the repair, recovery, and resilience of Michigan’s communities.
2) Discuss the three core dimensions of resilience – social, economic, and environment – and how historic preservation addresses them.
3) Describe specific projects – Michigan Central Station, Detroit Riverwalk, Dequindre Cut, Dreamtroit – and why they are examples of architectural adaptation and public space renewal.
4) Explain “upcycling waste” for the environmental stewardship of Detroit, and “reimagining” vacant land as space for cultural and environmental art.
5) Articulate that Resilience by Design is a philosophy of designing for continuity where cities thrive by being continually remixed, inclusive, and future-ready through the primacy of historic preservation.
For more information, please call us at 517.371.8080
or e-mail us at Info@mhpn.org